EYES IN COLOR The Happiness of the “Eyes in Color” Michelangelo La Luna The eyes of the Amazon children reflect the colors of a pristine nature that is threatened by rapacious economic interests. They are the curious, fragile, innocent eyes of creatures who need the loving embrace of their mother and their big sister, and the warm squeeze of the “painter of the wind” who holds them like his children. They are the eyes bathed in the vivid colors of a forest where there is no gray, eyes of those who are happy to hold in their stubby hands the hairy sloth, the snake twisting in their beardless arms, the “green-pluvial” parrot, the green-orange monkey who enjoys jumping on the hair of his best female friend. They are the eyes of those who know how to extract from fruit the green, red, black, white, yellow, orange and blue colors, with which to paint their faces, the ringed seed necklaces, and garlands of bird feathers. They are the deep eyes of the child crowned with red and blue feathers who celebrates with his pipe, together with the one who accompanies him with the beat of the drum. They are the eyes of those who live in symbiosis with nature and animals, of those who are happy to grow up in an authentic earthly paradise that [...]

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA Maestro Franco Azzinari is known all over the world as the painter of the wind; painter of the warm wind of the South, that wind which shapes the fields of ripe wheat, the areas of red poppies, the brooms in bloom and the centuries-old olive trees typical of the southern landscape. The definition, coined by the creative genius of Sergio Zavoli, with the passing of time has imposed itself as extraordinarily appropriate to highlight the specificity of the artist. In fact, for a long period of time in Franco's artistic life the wind was always present, palpable and vigorous. It is enough to stop and look at his first works to feel the sensation of the wind in your face: sometimes associated with its powerful howl, sometimes delicate with its light breeze, sometimes soaked in the smell of pollen that carries and the flavors of good things that caresses. Then time passed and Franco evolved, both as an artist and as a person, becoming a citizen of the world. That world citizen who stops in the places he visits to breathe the air and to communicate with the people he meets to understand their innermost emotions; emotions that he then transformed into beautiful artistic monographs and among them: the places of the Mediterranean myth, the seafaring people of vibrant Cuba and [...]

ESPRESSIONI DI GABRIEL GRACIA MARQUEZ Catalogo di 60 pagine a colori all'interno 20 opere pubblicate di Franco Azzinari. Azzinari first met the famous writer Gabriel Garcìa Màrquez in 2005 – introduced by Fidel Castro. Azzinari was familiar with several of his novels and was attracted by Màrquez's brilliant "magic realism". Since then, Azzinari has met Màrquez in the Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano, Havana, along with Alquimia Pena, director of the Foundation. Attracted by the strong personality and charisma of the Nobel Prize winner, Azzinari decided to paint his portrait. In December 2010, still in Cuba, they had the idea to organize an exhibition with twenty portraits of the writer. The event opened on December 8, 2011. Italian state television channels RAI 1, RAI 2 and RAI 3 carried extensive reportage by journalist, Pino Nano. Il Corriere della Sera published a review by Professor Nuccio Ordine and ANSA News Agency spread the news worldwide. Repetition and difference - Nuccio Ordine 1.La magia del ritratto. Mostra "Espressioni di Gabriel Garcia Marquez". Cine Latinoamericano, L'Havana Cuba It will be difficult to deny the close relationships that portrait, since its ancient origins, holds with magic. The action to retrabere <to retain> for instance, through a symbolic reproduction of a copy, holds in its polysemic Latin origin, also the [...]

EL ROSTRO DE LA HISTORIA Franco Azzinari e Fidel Castro Catalogo pagine 75 presentato durante la mostra "El Rostro de la Historia" Casa del Alba Cultural de la Habana - Cuba Dedica Fidel Castro a Franco Azzinari Franco Azzinari meets Fidel Castro Ruz for the first time on November 6, 2000, in Avenida de los Presidentes in Havana, during the erection of a statue dedicated to the Mexican President Benito Juárez (1806-1872). The artist goes at the event together with Miguel Barnet who, as a Member of the Cuban Government, allows him to overcome all the police checks. "The excitement was great - Azzinari says -. The Commander greeted me very cordially, and I told him I was in love with his country and explained him the work I was making about Cuba. He made me realize that it was already informed of everything". In May 2001, the Cuban Minister of Culture Avel Prieto called Azzinari to tell him that Fidel Castro wanted to invite him for dinner: "That evening -Azzinari remembers- we were seven, including Miguel Barnet, Avel Prieto and Charles Lager. Dinner started at 10:00 pm and ended at 4:00 am. I remember that after two hours Fidel, always dressed in army fatigues, has been absent for about fifteen minutes to get some stretch and, on his return, I [...]

CUBA Meeting with Fidel Castro Franco Azzinari e Fidel Castro The meeting with Cuba dates back to January 1992. Azzinari with two gallery owners attended an art fair in Miami and decided to embark for Havana, via Cancun. The magic of Havana gave them an infusion of joie de vivre. Azzinari was captured by the unique landscape of the island and they traveled as far as Camaguey. The countryside brought the painter back to his childhood. Images re-emerged from his memories – the old people… the roughness of their faces, their quiet work in the fields with the strength of their arms. Azzinari fell in love with the Cuba and promised himself to return with the palette and the colors to express on canvas those magical places and their unspoiled nature. Since then, he has made about 200 paintings and drawings of what impressed him most: man and nature. He portrays Alejandro Robaina, Compay Segundo, and Fidel Castro. Electa Editions published a catalog, including critical essays by Gianni Minà, Miguel Barnet, Sergio Zavoli, Carilda Oliver Labra and Raffaele De Grada. The exhibition, which portrays the Cuban adventure, opened at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Havana. A traveling exhibition presented by Vittorio Sgarbi and Pasquale De Marco traveled in 2002 to the cities of Riccione (Forlì) in the Castle of Agolanti and in Corigliano Calabro [...]

LOOKING FOR HEMINGHWAY The project "Looking for Hemingway" started in 2000. Azzinari met Gregorio Fuentes, a friend of the famous American writer during a visit to Cojimar, Cuba. The captain of the Pilar was a companion on Hemingway's adventures at sea. Gregorio's stories captured Azzinari's imagination. He fell in love with Hemingway's life and began to portray other fishermen (Osvaldo and Pedro) and to paint the beautiful Cuban landscapes loved by the Nobel Prize winner in Literature. In December 2008, the University of Calabria organized an exhibition of the first forty works of "Looking for Hemingway" and published the catalog of the show with a critical essay written by Fernanda Pivano, one of Hemingway closest friends. On December 10, 2010, an exhibition of twenty works dedicated to the American writer opened in the White Tower of the Hemingway Museum, in Finca Vigia, Havana. In September 2011, Azzinari and his friend Michelangelo La Luna, Professor of Italian Language and Literature at the University of Rhode Island, went to Montana to visit the writer's son, Patrick Hemingway. It was a warm and friendly meeting. Patrick and his wife Carol invited Azzinari and La Luna on a tour by minivan to Yellowstone Park, an oasis of natural beauty and wildlife. Hemingway's son walks in his father's footsteps in his love for the out-of-doors. Azzinari's imagination was captured by [...]

I LUOGHI DEL MITO ROMA Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Il Ministero dei Beni Culturali e Librari di Roma ha organizzato l'evento " I Luoghi del Mito" nelle sale della Biblioteca Nazionale, pubblicando il catalogo delle opere a cura di Claudio Strinati. La stessa mostra viene promossa dal Comune di Rimini e allestita nelle Sale delle Colonne, con la presentazione in catalogo di Sergio Zavoli. Claudio Strinati Franco Azzinari, On. Nicola Bono, Claudio Strinati e Dott. Francesco Sicilia Azzinari has travelled all over the world to land on his native country and as he once wrote, comparing himself to Ulysses, Calabria is his Itaca, hence in other words his starting point and his finishing line. In fact the master has wanted to verify a simple truth, one which must be experienced in first person in order to intimately and fully understand it. This truth lies in the interim of what is immediately grasped at a very early age, and what becomes consolidated through time but one cannot exist without the other until we discover that multiplicity and unity are one and the same. Azzinari has re-conquered his Calabria, rediscovering it still the same and yet different, in each part of the globe, up to a certain culminating moment of his life: his journey to Cuba. [...]